The Grand Design
"DING, DING” “Ladies and gentlemen, the captain has turned on the seat belt sign. We’re expecting a rough patch ahead
The Lesson of the Five Lilys
Candace Emory met the first of the five Lilys outside the Barton Springs pool. “It was my grandmother’s name,” a wispy redhead in Diesel jeans and a pink tube top, told her, jiggling the pram
Legacy
“When I die, Christopher, I don’t see a bit of sense in everybody traipsing all the way to College Station for the burial. If your father wasn’t already waiting for me in that silly family plot, I’d just have to put my foot down,
Lifeguard
The tortilla puffed with heat, one large pocket of air shoving up from against the pan, then suddenly ripping and steaming, making a sound like a very faint train whistle. Michael pinched the corner and flipped it. The air rushed out, and it flattened
The Snowbird
A cumulus of ladybugs moved steadily across the pastel-streaked sky. Everyone had virtually ignored reports in The Galveston Daily News predicting their arrival over the island’s grasslands 3/4 the result of an unusually warm spring. As the speckled mass advanced across the horizon
A Trio of Shorts
West Texas cacti and starved poles of yucca riddle the landscape. Only the charred road disturbs their prickly presence. Before him stretches a snakeskin of pavement. When asked, he says there were options he didn’t take, things he would do differently. Thank God there were no kids. Few possessions to speak of. According to the last marker, he is 98 miles from nowhere, but surely the road will end.